<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Called off',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/09/04.jpg" alt="People at the bottle return centre" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="health">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I got one of those cloth tape measures used by tailors and the like from my mother yesterday.
		At first, I considered getting a scale to help me track my progress in weight loss, but I&apos;ve come to realise that a scale misses the point because what I&apos;m interested in isn&apos;t weight loss.
		I&apos;m interested in <strong>*diameter*</strong> loss.
		Muscle weighs more than fat by volume, so if I lose fat but gain muscle, I may weigh the same or even more while my diameter still goes down.
		A scale provides me no way to measure fat loss, either.
	</p>
	<p>
		I expect my measurements to be somewhat inconsistent, but they should help me see a general trend so I know if I&apos;m making any progress.
		Today, my circumference seems to be 128 centimetres.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="redemption">
	<h2>Redemption centre</h2>
	<p>
		I ran some bottles over to the bottle deposit centre.
		I don&apos;t drink soda, but my coworkers throw their bottles in the trash instead of recycling them.
		So I gather the ones I notice and turn them in for the deposit.
		I&apos;d previously given up on collecting the deposits because when the redemption centre opened up, all the local stores were no longer obligated to accept bottles and give back deposits.
		So they stopped.
		I could no longer carry a big box of bottles to somewhere near my home to deal with them.
		I had to bike them in a small (large compared to other backpacks, but <strong>*tiny*</strong> compared to the large box I can carry only on foot) backpack to the redemption centre instead.
		I didn&apos;t have time fir that nonsense.
		They&apos;d opened the redemption centre to try to get more people tp return their bottles, but they&apos;d made bottle-returning a total nightmare for anyone not driving there by car.
		I mean, it&apos;s not even near a residential area.
		I can&apos;t be the only person hugely inconvenienced by this, to the point where they&apos;ve stopped returning bottles altogether.
		But now, I&apos;m trying to exercise more, so I think I&apos;ll try to get to the redemption centre often just for the trip there.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, the redemption centre has this annoying thing that they do where they try to bribe you into not taking actual money for your bottles that you paid actual money to get, by instead trying to get you to accept credit on a card for the bottles.
		The bribe is that if you spend the credit in a store instead of making the redemption centre give you actual money, you get twelve cents per bottle instead of ten.
		But most stores don&apos;t take the credit.
		A grocery store I frequent started taking the credit though, so I figured I&apos;d give it a try.
		Man, is the credit system annoying.
		You&apos;ve got to go to a computer in the store to print out a voucher for the credit, which must be used same-day.
		And you&apos;ve got to do this before your groceries have been totalled, so if you have more credit than you plan to spend right away, you&apos;ve got to pull out a calculator and total it yourself before checking out to avoid losing more money than you need to.
		If the machine fails to scan your card correctly, it&apos;ll beep like it did scan it, then dump you back on the intro screen without so much as an error message.
		Once you&apos;ve gotten into your account, you have two or three seconds to tell the machine how much credit you want to withdraw as a voucher.
		If you&apos;re too slow, you get dumped back on the entry screen and have to start over.
		Seriously?
		What a load of garbage.
		But I&apos;m poor, so I&apos;m just going to have to deal with it.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="soy">
	<h2>Soy milk</h2>
	<p>
		Last time I stopped at the discount store for soy milk, a week ago, I couldn&apos;t find it.
		They&apos;d rearranged the store and I didn&apos;t have time to hunt down the new location.
		I asked where it got moved to, and the employee directed me to an area where other items from the original location now were, but the soy milk wasn&apos;t there.
		There wasn&apos;t even a space for it, so it wasn&apos;t sold out or something.
		They&apos;d moved it elsewhere.
	</p>
	<p>
		This week, I&apos;m out though.
		I&apos;d have to make time to find the soy milk.
		I tried the spot I was directed to last time, and predictably couldn&apos;t find it.
		I asked an employee again, and they directed me back to the corner of the store it&apos;d been in when I last knew where to find it.
		It wasn&apos;t there.
		I searched for quite a while, and found it in the breakfast cereal isle.
		They&apos;d also moved the cow milk there, from where it used to sit near the old soy milk location.
		I guess the discount store has decided that the main purpose of soy milk and cow milk is to be used with breakfast cereal.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="computer">
	<h2>Mother&apos;s computer</h2>
	<p>
		Tonight, my mother called off the trip to the recycling centre.
		I guess she somehow thought that I needed something for myself over there, even though I&apos;d told her I was going to pick up a part I needed to rescue her files.
		That&apos;s what I&apos;d called it, too: a part I needed to rescue her files.
		I didn&apos;t call it a hard drive enclosure to her face until after explaining what I was using it for.
		It seems she only &quot;wanted my help&quot; over there as an excuse to give me a ride I couldn&apos;t easily decline.
		I so called that.
		Sort of.
		I though she thought I could help there somehow, but figured it was mostly an excuse to impose a ride on me that she knew very well I didn&apos;t want.
		Seeing as I have no business over there myself, she&apos;s instead going to have the people at the recycling centre copy over her files.
		Apparently, that&apos;s a service they provide when you buy a refurbished machine from them.
		Who knew?
		Anyway, I guess I won&apos;t be going then.
		It&apos;s too bad, too.
		I was warming up to the idea, and I even had the perfect outfit picked out.
		It&apos;s more masculine than what I wore yesterday, but with decidedly feminine accents.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
